Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Angelfire Series by Courtney Allison Moulton

*It's been almost a week since my last blog post, and I'm so sorry folks! It's midterm week (ugh) and I have been so swamped with studying! I did manage to finish this series, and this will be another 3 part review!

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First there are nightmares.
Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.

Then come the memories.
When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie's power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie's memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.

Now she must hunt.
Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.

The introduction to the Angelfire Series started off a bit slow for me. It felt like I was reading the diary of a high school girl; partying, school, hanging out with friends, etc. I had a difficult time connecting with Ellie, but thankfully, I continued reading. It got a lot more interesting after she began spending time with Will. Will is a wonderfully written character, although he is a little too perfect. The plot was filled with action, gore, and of course, star-crossed romance. Your typical forbidden love, with a few twists thrown in for effect. Ellie is the Preliator- a human with the ability to wield angelfire. She has amazing strength and agility, incredible fighting skills, and deadly weapons that she can summon with a thought. Will is her Guardian, an angelic reaper who protects her, and has protected her through 500 years of human lives and reincarnations. He is always there for her, through all of her lives, to help her fight the demons that only wish to take over the world. Ellie's job is to fight them, but can she really accept this fate? She is only a 17 year old human girl, even with these incredible powers buried inside of her. And she is beginning to have feelings for her Guardian, feelings that are most definitely not going to make spending every day with him an easy task. The story is not the typical angel/demon tale. There was a lot of originality and creative story telling in this book, and after the first 6 or 7 chapters, I completely fell into the story. It was well written, and the twists and turns in the plot were perfect. The secondary characters were also written well, and I instantly fell in love with Cadan for some reason. I love his character, and I would have liked to see Will with a lot more of his characteristics. He was arrogant, sarcastic, and sexy as hell! To wrap up my all over the place review, I did enjoy this book, save for the beginning. Anyone who enjoys the whole, good vs. evil, angels and demons themed paranormal will completely enjoy this series!

"'I hate...,' he started, his shaking voice trailing off. 'I hate when you die. It destroys me. I know I have no right to be so upset, because I'm not the one losing my life, but it breaks me apart inside. I'm not very good with words, and I don't know how to explain to you how I feel. I get lonely when you aren't with me. I miss you. And every time you die, a little piece of me dies with you.'" -Will

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Life as the Preliator is harder than Ellie ever imagined.
Balancing real life with the responsibility of being Heaven’s warrior is a challenge for Ellie. Her relationship with Will has become all business, though they both long for each other. And now that the secret of who she really is has come out, so have Hell’s strongest reapers. Grown bold and more vicious, the demonic threaten her in the light of day and stalk her in the night.

She’s been warned.
Cadan, a demonic reaper, comes to her with information about Bastian’s new plan to destroy Ellie’s soul and use an ancient relic to wake all the souls of the damned and unleash them upon humanity. As she fights to stay ahead of Bastian’s schemes, the revelations about those closest to her awaken a dark power within Ellie that threatens to destroy everything—including herself.

She’ll be betrayed.
Treachery comes even from those whom she loves, and Ellie is broken by the deaths of those who stood beside her in this Heavenly war. Still, she must find a way to save the world, herself, and her love for Will. If she fails, there will be hell to pay.

Wings of the Wicked began a lot better than the first in the series, thankfully. It picked up right where Angelfire left off, with Ellie and Will battling demon reapers that are being sent to kill them. I enjoyed getting to know the characters better, and learn more of their back stories. Especially Cadan. He is, hands down, still my favorite character! Ellie and Will continue to fight their forbidden love, and it does begin to get tedious listening to Ellie's internal whining about Will's refusal to be with her. I liked that this book was a bit like a treasure hunt, where they are all searching for angelic relics to stop Bastian and his army of demons. The originality of the characters and the story continued. The descriptions of the creatures was wonderful in a disgusting, rotting flesh sort of way. I could picture them in my mind, which probably isn't the greatest thing! I can't say much without giving away spoilers, but this book does have a lot more action and adventure, and twists and turns than the first one. I feel it was a wonderful sequel, although the ending was heartbreaking. I am beyond thankful that I already had the third book on hand when I finished this one. I would have been devastated to have to wait to find out what happens!

"Dragging myself to my feet, I looked up to see the reaper turn back toward me, hate spilling over her ugly face. I tightened my grip on both my sickle-shaped Khopesh swords, and they burst into angelfire, the bright white flames licking up the blades. The light danced across the reaper's features, the sharp highlights and shadows making her appear even more like the Hellspawn that she was. Her black lips pulled back, revealing saber canines as long as my forearm. She snapped her jaws and laughed, grinding her talons into the pavement. 'I'm shocked you're back on your feet after that one, Preliator,' she sneered."

"As much as I hated to admit it, it had been easier to be around him before he'd kissed me that first time. I was a seventeen-year old girl. I wanted to be loved by a great boy, and I was, but I couldn't have him. And it broke my heart."

"'I'm not here to fight,' he said. 'Yeah, right.' I yanked my arm down and shot a knee into his gut. He let out a whoosh of air, and I slammed a palm into his chest, shoving his back into the wall. Tiles cracked and he doubled over. 'Wait,' he pleaded as I curled my hand around his throat and pressed him harder into the wall. My eyes went wide when I recognized him. My spiked adrenaline hadn't allowed me to think straight right away, but I'd know that ethereally beautiful face and pale gold hair anywhere. It was Cadan. He was like a real life version of an ancient Greek statue- except not totally naked. Thank god...or maybe not."

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Your strength in heart and hand will fall. . . .
Ellie knows that the darkest moments are still to come, and she has everything to fight for:

She must fight for Will.
The demonic have resorted to their cruelest weapons to put Will in mortal danger, and Ellie makes an unlikely alliance to save him and to stop Lilith and Sammael, who seek to drown the world in blood and tear a hole into Heaven.

She must fight for humanity.
As the armies of Hell rise and gather for the looming End of Days, Ellie and her band of allies travel to the world’s darkest and most ancient regions in her quest to come into her full glory as the archangel Gabriel.

And Ellie must save herself.
Her humanity withers beneath the weight of her cold archangel power, but Ellie must hold tight to who she is and who she loves as she prepares for the ultimate battle for Heaven and Earth.

In this final installment in the Angelfire trilogy, Courtney Allison Moulton brings her dark world of epic battles and blistering romance to a blazing bright conclusion.

This final book in the trilogy was wonderful. I was more than happy to see Will finally do something about his love for Ellie. I was beyond tired of hearing her internal dialogue about his refusal of her love, blah blah! This book had even more action and adventure than the second, and I found myself completely addicted to this story. I don't want to give anything away, but we got to know Cadan a lot better in this book. He was one of the prominent characters and I couldn't have been happier. I hate that he is in love with his brother's girlfriend; she doesn't deserve him in my opinion! The demons are more bold, and unafraid to show themselves to humans, resulting in a lot of people close to Ellie finding out exactly what she is. I found myself crying more than once near the ending, and I was impressed with Ellie's selflessness when the time came to fulfill her destiny. The love between Ellie and Will is phenomenal; it is not the typical teenage girl meets boy and instantly falls in love garbage. It truly was a wonderful love, centuries old, with ups and downs that are completely realistic in a supernatural kind of way! The ending was heartbreaking, but the only way that Miss Moulton could have ended it. Sigh. This was all in all, a well written, original and creative series that I am thankful to have read!

"You will never see the ends of his armies. They blanket the Earth as a storm blankets the sky, but the sun will never rise again.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You demonic all think you’re Shakespeare. Really nice. Good-bye.” Then I took off her head and the rest of her burned up.”

“All the beasts of Hell knew they couldn't stop me. I was the archangel Gabriel, the Preliator, and they knew that no matter how many times they killed, I always came back to kill them. No matter how much they frightened me, I remembered what Cadan had told me about the stories of me he had grown up hearing. Even demons feared something. The demonic reapers had nightmares of their own, stories they told one another to terrify, a legend that haunted them in their sleep. That was me. I was Hell's nightmare.” -Ellie

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I read books because I love to do so. I have never been paid by an author or publisher for a review. I do accept free ARCs from authors, but in no way have I ever been compensated for my own opinion! Please do not offer to do so. All book cover images and book synopsis are taken from Goodreads. Blog graphics are made by me.

Hey fellow book nerds! My name is Morrighan, and I am addicted to everything bookish. I am an English major, book nerd, and blogger extraordinaire. My reading tastes tend to lean towards the fantasy, paranormal, and dystopian genres, but I don't discriminate. I will read anything under the sun, save for biographies of old folks! I was raised in a Native American and Celtic Pagan family, and I still believe in faeries..(:

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